Thursday, September 26, 2013

People inspect the site of a double suicide bomb attack in the Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013. Two suicide bombers, one in an explosives-laden car and the other on foot, hit a cluster of funeral tents packed with mourning families in a Shiite neighbourhood in Baghdad, the deadliest in a string of attacks around Iraq that killed at least 92 on Saturday.

Photograph by: Hadi Mizban , The Associated Press

BAGHDAD — Two suicide bombers, one in an explosives-laden car and the other on foot, struck a cluster of funeral tents packed with mourning families in a Shiite neighbourhood in Baghdad, the deadliest in a string of attacks around Iraq that killed at least 96 people on Saturday.

The assaults, the latest in a months-long surge of violence, are a chilling reminder of insurgents' determination to re-ignite sectarian conflict more than a decade after the U.S.-led invasion.

Thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violent attacks in recent months — a level of bloodshed not seen since Iraq pulled back from the brink of civil war in 2008 — despite appeals for restraint from Shiite and Sunni political leaders.

The attack on the funeral was one of the largest single terrorist assaults on civilians in Iraq in recent years. It happened shortly before sunset in the densely populated Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad.

Police said at least 72 people were killed and more than 120 were wounded in that attack. One bomber was able to drive up near the tent before detonating his deadly payload, and another on foot blew himself up nearby, police said.

The explosions set the tents and several nearby cars on fire, sending a towering plume of thick black smoke over the city.

"I saw several charred bodies on the ground and tents on fire and also burning cars. Wounded people were screaming in pain," said Sheik Sattar al-Fartousi, one of the mourners. "The scene was horrible. The funeral turned into an inferno."

He said the first blast went off as dinner was being served in one of several tents set up for the funeral of a member of the al-Fartousi tribe. He estimated that more than 500 people were attending the event.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the day's attacks. Al-Qaida's local franchise in Iraq frequently targets Shiite civilians and security forces in an attempt to undermine public confidence in the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Saturday's violence came as voters in the northern Kurdish autonomous region cast ballots in local elections for the Kurdistan Regional Government's 111-seat legislature. Iraqi Kurds are looking to bolster their autonomy while insulating their increasingly prosperous enclave from the growing violence roiling the rest of the country.

The pace of violent attacks in parts of Iraq outside the three-province Kurdish region has spiked sharply since security forces carried out a deadly crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq in April. Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs have been protesting against the Shiite-led government since late last year, alleging discrimination and criticizing the application of tough anti-terrorism measures against their sect.

Sunni extremists have been trying to capitalize on those Sunni-Shiite tensions, which are being inflamed by the sectarian divisions reflected in the civil war in neighbouring Syria.